Players from Argentina's 2022 World Cup-winning side have recalled in a documentary mini-series that moments before the final against France, national team coach Lionel Scaloni was unable to stop himself from crying with emotion.
"It was the worst team talk in the world," one of his assistants later joked.
"We were all watching Scaloni while he was speaking," goalkeeper Emiliano ‘Dibu’ Martínez recalls in an on-camera interview.
The coach was telling them to attack down the left flank. The team talk lasted only "two minutes and then he starts crying. 'Right, I want to tell you...', and then he starts crying and crying, and whenever he tried to continue, it got even worse," says Martínez.
The anecdote is one of the most talked-about moments in the newly released documentary mini-series El Metodo Scaloni (“The Scaloni Method”). Across three episodes, it explores how the coach’s leadership inspired Argentina to win the World Cup in Qatar in 2022.
Wearing his Inter Miami club side jacket, Lionel Messi laughs as he remembers the “team talk” incident, explaining that Scaloni – unable to continue because of his tears – eventually handed over to one of his assistants, former Argentina international Pablo Aimar.
But Aimar was crying as well and kept saying, "I can't either, I can't either.”
“I don't even know whether anyone ended up saying anything!" says Messi.
Walter Samuel, another member of Scaloni's coaching staff, remembers the tension and tears that preceded the historic penalty shoot-out victory that delivered Argentina's third World Cup title.
"We couldn't speak. I think it was the worst team talk in the world," Samuel says, laughing.
For midfielder Rodrigo De Paul, however, the pre-match meeting achieved its purpose, despite neither of the coaches being able to get their words out as they were overwhelmed by emotion.
"It was a team talk in its own way. He probably got across exactly what he wanted to. Sometimes you don't need to say much for us to understand," says De Paul.
"He knows exactly which buttons to press with each of us. Making the person better in order to make the player better – that's the method," he adds.
– TIMES/AFP
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